Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
William Brown is eleven years old, and he is always in trouble. He has a gang of friends called the Outlaws. In every story, William makes a plan. He plans to help someone, or earn money, or fix something that is wrong. His plans always sound clever to him. And they always go wrong in the funniest ways. His poor family never knows what he will do next. Neither will you, and that is the fun.
William Brown is eleven, scruffy, and full of plans. With his gang, the Outlaws, he decides to help a neighbour, earn some money, put on a play, or fix some injustice he has noticed. Every plan begins with perfect confidence. Every plan goes wrong, usually in front of witnesses, and William faces the ruins with dignity, ready to explain it was not his fault. His long suffering family braces itself for the next idea.
Richmal Crompton built the book as twelve separate short stories, each a complete disaster from start to finish. You can read them in any order. The pattern repeats, plan, confidence, collapse, but the inventions are always new, and William's reasoning is just logical enough to sound right to him. The grown ups speak the language of rules; William speaks the language of honour and adventure.
It works because the comedy comes from truth: children do reason like William, and adults do fail to understand. The stories never laugh at him cruelly, and he never becomes a bad boy, just a very determined one. That is why readers have loved these disasters for a hundred years, and why William never has to learn his lesson.
Just William, published in 1922, introduced William Brown, an eleven year old schoolboy with a genius for trouble, along with his gang, the Outlaws, and a family worn patient by his schemes. Crompton's twelve stories follow one happy pattern: William plans to help, escape boredom or right a wrong, and each plan collapses into glorious disorder. The comedy is unsentimental, and a century of readers have loved his disasters, because William never learns and never needs to.
Just William, published in 1922, introduced William Brown, an eleven year old schoolboy with a genius for trouble, along with his gang, the Outlaws, and a family worn patient by years of his schemes. Richmal Crompton wrote twelve stories here, and dozens of books after: William schemes to help, to escape boredom, to raise money or to right a wrong, and each plan collapses into glorious disorder. The comedy is precise and unsentimental, built on the gap between William's logic and the adult world's, and it has kept the books in print for a century, loved by children and grown ups alike.
Starvard carries Just William because it is the first book of one of the best loved series in children's literature, and a library shelf of classics should start series at the beginning. William earns his place honestly: exasperating, loyal, endlessly inventive, and funny in a way that has not dated at all. Readers aged nine or ninety who enjoy watching a confident plan meet reality, families hunting for stories that make everyone in the room laugh, and anyone who was ever eleven and misunderstood will all take William to their hearts.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 34414.
The first chapter
JUST—WILLIAM
Title: Just—William
Author: Richmal Crompton
Illustrator: Thomas Henry
Release date: November 23, 2010 [eBook #34414]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34414
Credits: Produced by David Clarke, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
JUST—WILLIAM
William, facing a man wearing a bowler hat WILLIAM, CLASPING AN EMPTY ACID DROP BOTTLE TO HIS BOSOM, WAS LEFT TO FACE MR. MOSS. (See page 202).
JUST—WILLIAM
BY
RICHMAL CROMPTON
G.N. Ltd.
ILLUSTRATED BY
THOMAS HENRY
LONDON
GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED
SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND, W.C.
First Edition May, 1922.
Second Impression October, 1922.
Third Impression January, 1923.
Fourth Impression February, 1923.
Fifth Impression May, 1923.
Sixth Impression September, 1923.
Seventh Impression December, 1923.
Eighth Impression February, 1924.
Ninth Impression May, 1924.
Made and Printed in Great Britain.
Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1922. Author died 1969. Public domain in the United States. Share this book: WhatsApp
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